


there's a monster standing where you should be

by almostoutofminutes



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood, Buried Alive, Canon-Typical Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark Allison Argent, Fire, Gen, Ghost Allison Argent, Not Canon Compliant, POV Allison Argent, Please Be careful, basically it's very much a horror fic, post season 3B, so if that kind of thing makes you uncomfortable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 11:39:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4434137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almostoutofminutes/pseuds/almostoutofminutes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So she’s a monster now? Fine. She can work with that. She’ll just do what monsters do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there's a monster standing where you should be

**Author's Note:**

> This was done for the [Teen Wolf Reverse Bang](http://twreversebang.livejournal.com/) on livejournal. The mods were amazing, answering questions and dealing with my confusion and basically just being awesome at what they do. So props to them. 
> 
> A huge thanks to [my beta](http://themagicstrugglebus.tumblr.com/), who listened to me whine and complain without complaining herself, and who agreed to help me out even though she isn't nearly as invested in Teen Wolf as I am. There were a lot of late night texts and rants, and she dealt with them all. She's such a great friend, and I love her to death. So props to her.
> 
> And finally, the art for this belongs to [diannealmond](http://diannealmond.tumblr.com/), who was so nice and so chill and collaborated with me even when she didn't have to and made some fantastic pieces in the process. This was my first ever bang of any kind, for any fandom, and I was so lucky to get such a cool artist. So major props to her. 
> 
> Title comes from "Paint You Wings" by All Time Low because I'm a sucker for their lyrics and also long fic titles.

She wakes up in darkness. The air is thick and stuffy around her, rank with the smell of wet mud and decay. She’s lying on something soft, with softness on either side and softness right above her, but she can tell it’s just a thin veneer of fabric. Like a satin lining in a giant wooden box. Like a coffin.

When she opens her mouth, nothing comes out. Not a scream, a cough, a groan, nothing. Not even air. Her heart seizes in her chest, but she can’t feel it beating.

The darkness is so heavy, resting on her limbs and her chest and her eyelids. It seems to go on forever, too, but the soft hardness is only inches above her. There isn’t even room to raise her arm all the way, or sit up.

She has to get out of here. She’s going to suffocate, or give herself a heart attack, something. So she punches up into the wood as hard as she can, tensing the muscles in her arm and abdomen.

Fiery pain erupts in her gut, making her jaw drop in a silent gasp and bright colors dance in her dark vision. Her trembling fingers drift beneath her sweater.  There’s wetness on her stomach, a lot of it, warm and thick and it _hurts_. She’s injured, too? Is she going to bleed out?

No. This isn’t how it ends. She won’t be trapped in a box for who knows how long, running out of air, cramped and hot and—

She punches up into the wood, again and again and again, until she can feel skin splitting. Blood drips down onto her face, but she ignores it. It falls down the sides of her ribcage in slow, tacky rivulets, pooling under the small of her back, but she ignores it. Pain ripples through her in undulating waves, making her shake, making her cry, but she ignores it. She just keeps pounding at the wood, splintering it, then splitting it, then cracking it open in a long, jagged line. Dirt sprinkles down on her in a damp drizzle.

Shit. This isn’t any better. It’s _worse_. Hot, cramped, suffocating, and now buried.

Tears well up in her eyes, mixing in with the dirt and making her face itch. Panic is making it hard to think, hard to move. Is this it? Is she stuck here forever? Will she die here?

_Crying is for little girls._

_You’re not a little girl, are you?_

_Think clinically. Unemotionally. Rationally._

The words sound like her mother, and they calm her nerves. Turning her head to avoid getting dirt in her mouth, she parts her lips and mumbles the words under her breath like a habit, like a second nature mantra.

Or at least, she tries to. Nothing happens, though. No words. No mumbling. No breath.

Gritting her teeth to stave off more tears, she turns back to the dirt pouring down on her. With one last punch, she widens the crack in the wood until it falls down on her in two separate pieces. The drizzle of dirt turns into a landslide, wet earth falling onto her and slipping into all her crevices. Under her knees, her armpits, beneath her neck, everywhere.

She pushes up, splitting the earth with her hands as fast as she can. Somehow, she fights her way to into a sitting position, scooping earth away from her head. Then she’s on her feet.

It’s like trying to climb loose sand, crumbles of dirt falling away every time she tries to put weight on them. But there are enough rocks and hardened pieces of sod to hoist herself higher and higher in fits and bursts.

She’s running out of air. She has to be. There’s dirt in her mouth, falling down her throat in gritty trickles. She’ll run out of air before she ever reaches the surface. If there is a surface. How far under is she?

The earth is infinite, neverending, eternal, until finally it isn’t. She’s clawing her way up, up, up, and then her hands are grasping at air. Fresh, cool air.

Her head breaks the surface. Her shoulders, chest, hips. Finally, she tugs her feet clear and flops over onto the ground, her face smashed against a swath of grass. She opens her mouth, moves her chest up and down, feels her lungs expand. But no air passes through her teeth. She’s not breathing.

She’s not dying, either. Her vision isn’t fading, and her head isn’t spinning from a lack of oxygen. So what’s going on?

Raising her head, she looks around her. She has to squint against the bright sunlight, but it isn’t hard to figure out where she is: a cemetery. The biggest clues are the tombstones. They’re everywhere. Some are simple, gray rectangles with only names and dates etched on the face. Others are more ornate, carved out of beautiful stone and adorned with statues and etched with calligraphy. There’s even a mausoleum off in the distance, its arched roof peeking out over a small hill.

She sits up and turns around.

An angel is looming over her, expression fierce, and for a second she thinks the end has come. Her mouth is open in another silent, breathless scream before she realizes it’s just a statue. Another tombstone.

It’s not like any of the others, though. It’s made of smooth, white stone, and it’s at least fifteen feet tall and nearly as wide. It shines blindingly in the afternoon sun, unblemished by dirt or erosion. Every inch of it is carved with an insane attention to detail, from the individual feathers on its great wide wings to its rippling tunic, carefully cut to make stone look soft as satin. Tendons stand out on the hand clutching a longbow. The other hand has two fingers curled around the string, pulling an arrow back in a perfect draw. The face is contorted into an intense expression of concentration and determination, and its locks of hair are frozen in an eternally windswept look. There’s even some kind of circlet on its head, although this part is made of metal that glints dully in the sunlight. It’s too high up for her to see the details.

It’s gorgeous. Gorgeous and terrible.

Her eyes flicker past the statue’s sandals, past the pedestal it stands on, all the way down to the inscription on the tombstone.

_Allison Argent. 1994-2011. Daughter, friend, warrior._

Just below that is a mound of dirt. It’s the earth she just crawled through, the earth she was just born from. It should be a mess. There should be a hole, traces of the blood still dripping from her body, something to show what she just went through.

There’s nothing. Just a tightly packed mound of dirt in front of a tombstone with her name on it. A bed of purple wolfsbane, undisturbed, is just beginning to blossom.

She sucks in an airless breath. No wonder she’s not dying.

She’s already dead.

\-------

The worst part is that she doesn’t know what the hell is going on. Yeah, she’s seen all the movies, watched all the television shows, and read all the shitty books on this stuff. And sure, she always assumed it was fiction, but she always assumed werewolves were fiction, too, and look how _that_ turned out. There were kernels of truth buried under all the bullshit in those werewolf movies, so why wouldn’t the same be true of whatever she is?

But she can’t figure this out, and no one is here to help her out. There are no bright lights to show her the way, and no angels besides the one standing over her grave.

She’s not see-through, that much is for certain. She’s can’t pass through solid objects, either. She also can’t affect them, can’t pick up rocks or tear up blades of grass. Her fingers are repelled each time, like the entire world is a magnet and she suddenly has the same charge. The only thing she’s managed to do is slither out of her own coffin like some weird, bleeding worm, and even that was a one-time deal.

She isn’t perfectly restored, either. Her body isn’t an undamaged specter of what she used to be. There are scrapes and bruises all over her body, her muscles ache like she just ran a marathon, and there’s the small matter of the gaping stab wound in her gut that oozes blood but doesn’t actually bleed.

And also, she can’t leave. Every time she tries to move beyond the graveyard, her body is wracked with severe pains that feel more alive than her own body. If she keeps going, pushing through the agony, everything goes black and she wakes up in the wolfsbane on top of her grave, surrounded by a sea of light purple. No matter what she does, she’s like a dog on a leash. A twenty-foot, invisible leash attached to her psychotic angel tombstone.

None of it adds up to what she would have expected of the afterlife. Then again, she never really expected there’d be an afterlife in the first place.

At least she has her memory. She can’t imagine wandering around, unsure of who she is or how she lived. She remembers her life, her family, friends, her legacy, everything. She’s not an echo, or whatever the proper term is.

But that also means she remembers her death. Vividly. It took a couple of blissfully ignorant hours after her rebirth, but eventually it all came back to her in horrible black-and-white images. Her father. The silver arrowheads. Stiles, his face so familiar but the expression on it so horribly not. Lydia is missing, _her_ Lydia. She kills an Oni, she actually kills one. It must have been the silver in her arrow. But she doesn’t have a chance to tell her friends before she’s lying on the ground in Scott’s arms, and she can’t choke out the words around the blood in her throat. She left the world with her eyes trained on Scott’s face, the tears trailing from his bright eyes. Not a horrible way to go out, she had thought. Bright, love, then nothing.

But as she sits on her grave, cross-legged in those goddamn flowers, peace is the furthest thing from her mind. She frowns up at the angel. The angel frowns back down at her, arrow aimed straight at her face. At first it seemed like the angel was supposed to protect her grave and the decomposing body underneath. Keep intruders out. Grave robbers. Whatever. But the more she stares at it, the more it seems like it’s a prison guard. It’s keeping her close. If she strays too far, that arrow may just find its way into her spine.

Is this what she gave her life for? This is her peace? Her rest? She gets to camp out by her own ostentatious tombstone for the rest of eternity?

No, peace is no longer on her mind. Anger, frustration, and fear are oozing through her stagnant bloodstream, sliding down her back, coagulating in her bruises and the gaping hole in her dress. She feels like a monster, an undead _thing_ doomed to wallow forever in misery and loneliness, helpless and in pain. She’s not sure there’s anything left of the girl buried six feet under wolfsbane. The daughter, the friend, the warrior.

No, she’s none of those things. She’s a monster now.

And monsters don’t protect people. Monsters don’t do the right thing, the _heroic_ thing. They look out only for themselves. That’s what she spent the past few years fighting, right? Monsters that looked out only for themselves?

A smile twitches the corner of her mouth. It feels awkward, ugly, but it relieves some of the tension in her limbs.

So she’s a monster now? Fine. She can work with that. She’ll just do what monsters do.

The angel’s eyes stare down at her, cold and unfeeling.

\-------

The first person to show up is Kira, oddly enough. The kitsune has definitely carved herself a spot in their little rag-tag group of friends, but Allison hadn’t spent much time with the kitsune on her own. She never would have expected a personal visit from the girl without the others in tow, but there she stands, right at the edge of Allison’s grave.

And she looks good, dressed in galaxy-print leggings and a black blouse, her dark hair tumbling down her back in gentle waves. She looks healthy and at peace, even if her eyes are sad.

She looks like everything Allison isn’t.

Kira clasps her hands together, her fingers fidgeting together in a nervous tic. Her head is bowed towards the grave. “Hi,” she says. Her voice is hesitant, like she doesn’t know if she should be here, or if anyone is listening.

Allison is listening closely, though, with a frown etched deep into her face.

“You probably didn’t expect to see me here alone,” Kira continues. “I’m not sure I expected to come here alone. But I want…I want to say something.”

Allison scowls. She wants to say something, too. A lot of things, actually. But she can’t. She doesn’t have the luxury anymore, can’t let words tumble uselessly from her mouth like Kira apparently can.

“I just….I wanted to say I’m sorry,” Kira says, her voice trembling a little. “You were so brave, so kind, and I feel like we barely got to know each other. And…and I’m sorry about….about the Oni. They were under St—“ She shakes her head, huffing out a nervous breath. “Under the Nogitsune’s control, but they were from one of my mother’s tails. They were hers. And I’m sorry for that.”

Allison’s eyes flare wide. She grits her teeth.

 _Good point_.

She might have accepted an apology like that when she was alive, but now? She can’t do it. She can’t make herself smile and move on. Apologies are meaningless, but her silence isn’t. Her loneliness, her confusion, every goddamn thing about her current situation holds more meaning than the passive words tripping out of Kira’s mouth, designed to make _her_ feel better and no one else.

She’s no stranger to anger, but this is new. This is pure, unadulterated rage, slugging through her rotting veins like sludge and making her skin itch with the need to lash out. It feels _other_ , like something that has burrowed deep inside of her. A parasite that crawled in through her pores and won’t let go.

And it feels _good_. It feels energizing, like the slow slide of sunshine on bare skin. It’s like she can do whatever she wants, any of the things she would never have allowed herself to do in life.

Kira is still talking, something about responsibility and honor and other shit Allison no longer cares about. But just as Allison snaps back to attention, Kira turns to walk away. She’s _walking away_ , which Allison has been trying to do for god only knows how many days. And now Kira does it like it’s nothing?

She snaps. Or maybe it’s something inside of her that snaps. Maybe it’s just one part of her that breaks open, just one tiny crack in her chassis that lets the rage leak out. All she knows is that one second she’s ten feet away from Kira, and the next she’s in her face, mouth torn open in a jagged, silent shriek. Her hands lash out, fingers tensed like claws.

Contact. Sweet, glorious, violent contact. Her nails jab into Kira’s shoulders, right by her collarbone, right by her beating heart.

Kira’s cry isn’t silent. It’s practically ripped from her mouth, high and trembling, and Allison relishes in it. Even after she pulls back, hands relaxing, a smile tilts the corners of her mouth.

Something tickles the back of her mind, though. It’s a thought she has no interest in but can’t make herself ignore, so she doesn’t even try: _What’s happened to me?_ Not only is she somehow undead, but she’s a completely different person. She’s violent, angry, vengeful in a way she hadn’t thought possible during her life. And that’s counting her brief stints under the wings of Kate and Gerard. _If_ _I had a mirror to look into right now, would I recognize myself?_

 _Does it matter?_ she counters.There’s no mirror to look in. _And besides, I like the new me._

Kira has stumbled back under the assault, and her eyes are wide and twitchy, glancing all around her in panic and confusion. She may have felt Allison, but she still can’t see her. She has no idea what just happened to her.

Her confusion would be sickly amusing, except for the fact that Allison has no idea either. She just touched something, some _one_ , for the first time since this whole nightmare began. And when she peers towards the other girl, head tilted, eyes narrowed, she sees a thin trail of black vapor connecting her to Kira. It’s too thin to be smoke, and too dark to be mist. It’s just there. And Allison has no explanation for it.

Without another word, Kira turns around and starts running away, her normally graceful limbs stumbling in her haste. The black vapor stretches out between them, thin and tremulous in the summer air.

And then the weirdest thing happens.

The vapor pulls taut, and Allison gets pulled right along with her.

She catches on pretty quick: it’s another one of those damn leashes. Except this time, instead of being tethered to her grave, she’s tethered to Kira.

It’s definitely weird. It’s like there’s a rope tied around her waist, pulling her after Kira like a kite, her head snapping back and her feet tripping up. She would have fallen, except the tugging keeps her upright. Eventually she finds her balance and starts to run after Kira on her own.

It’s not quite the same as running when she was alive. She can’t feel the blood pumping through her body, can’t feel the air rushing in and out of her lungs, can’t hear the slap of her feet on dirt or pavement. But she can feel the burn in her muscles, and that has to be enough.

It’s more than she ever expected.

\-------

Kira doesn’t see anyone else on the run back to her house, and when she bursts through the door, her parents aren’t anywhere to be found. Allison slips inside just behind her, yanking her arm forward to avoid crushing it in the door as it slams closed. If it had closed on her hand, what would have happened? Would she feel it? Would it hurt? She almost wants to try.

Kira is a mess. She’s pale and shivering, her breath coming in tiny little gasps. Her dark eyes dart aimlessly around the house, scanning every corner of every room as if searching for something just on the peripheries of her vision. Her hands are curled into fists around the hems of her sleeves. Her feet shuffle uselessly on the hardwood floor.

She looks scared. Confused. _Haunted_.

Allison loves it. It’s sick, and violent, and it doesn’t change the fact that she’s angry and miserable, but she gets satisfaction from watching someone else suffer. She doesn’t bother thinking about why that is.

Instead, she focuses on her new surroundings. She’s never been in Kira’s house before, never really had occasion. It’s fine, as houses go. Normal. Modern-looking. Lots of large windows looking out over a wooded backyard. Clean wooden floors dotted with cleaner white rugs. She can see a sliver of kitchen through the doorway that looks neat and clean-cut, all sharp edges and shiny appliances. But none of that matters. It could be a rat-infested hovel filled with asbestos, for all she cares. She’s just happy to be away from that cemetery, away from that damned angel lording over her grave like an executioner. For the first time in this existence, she’s out of her stone-studded hell.

It’s not exactly freedom, though. When Kira makes her way towards her bedroom, Allison has to follow, despite how much she wants to explore. The dark comet’s tail connecting them is only about ten feet long, give or take. When she tries to resist and stay put, the rope tugging at her waist turns into barbed wire in her gut, digging into bodily organs that don’t even work anymore but still somehow ache, burn, rip. It’s just like at the graveyard, when she was tethered to her tombstone. Since she doesn’t want to black out and wake up back in that bed of wolfsbane, she goes with it and follows Kira into the bedroom.

Just like the rest of the house, the bedroom is nice enough. It doesn’t look at all like Allison’s old bedroom, but the feeling is similar enough. Walls and furniture are dotted with photos of friends and family. The bedspread and pillow set are startlingly bright in color. Comic books are piled up on the bedside table. Textbooks are on the floor next to an open backpack, shoved halfway under the bed. It’s homey. Personal. A teenage girl’s private space.

Just another thing Allison doesn’t have anymore.

Kira switches on the overhead light as well as her bedside lamp, despite the late sunlight streaming through the window. She grabs her laptop out of her backpack and opens it. A couple of clicks later, the pounding bass of EDM music is blasting through the empty air.

She’s filling the space with sound and light. Trying to drive out whatever presence she can feel on the edges of her consciousness.

But Allison’s not going anywhere. She thinks back to the rush she got when she attacked Kira, the rush she’s _still_ getting from the girl’s fear. It’s the best she’s felt since this whole nightmare started. She’s not giving this up any time soon. She’s not sure she could.

She has a plan, but she needs to bide her time. What she has in mind is some real horror movie shit, so she wants to do it right. Which means waiting until darkness falls to make her move.

It’s excruciating, though, watching Kira putter around, fix herself dinner, struggle through homework she probably doesn’t even care about. All while Allison trails behind her like a shadow, sitting in the corner of whatever room Kira has dragged her into, hugging her legs to her chest.

The worst part? Kira seems to have shaken off this afternoon. She still glances around occasionally, nerves making her fingers fidgety, but other than that she’s her usual chipper self. She texts her friends, dances badly to EDM while making herself a frozen pizza, and laughs along to some Netflix show that Allison can’t bring herself to pay attention to.

She’s happy again. Not five hours ago, she was talking to a dead friend, and now she’s jumping up and down to Feed Me.

It makes Allison sick.

On the bright side, Kira’s parents aren’t coming home. They call her cell phone, and from what Allison can make out, they’re out of town for the week visiting old friends, or something like that.

She tries to imagine Kira throwing a raging party in their absence. It’s almost laughable. The worst she’ll do is probably play her music too loud (like she already is) and eat too much junk food (like she already is). Maybe invite Scott over and hold his hand.

Allison tilts her head, considering.

She snaps back to attention when Kira heaves herself up from her bed. She watches as the girl grabs shorts and a tank top from her dresser and disappears out into the hallway. It’s only as she’s following that she notices the darkness behind the window.

The sun is down. And Kira is going to bed.

It’s show time.

Kira returns from the bathroom, slips under the covers, and clicks off her lamp, smothering the room in darkness. The only light is from her phone charging on her nightstand, and even that disappears once the phone goes to sleep.

Considering how new Allison is at this undead business, and how little information she has to go on, she isn’t sure how well this will unfold. She isn’t sure what to do, how to do it, or if it will be effective.

So it makes sense when she chokes. Here it is, the moment she’s been waiting for, complete with the darkness she had hoped would inspire her, but it doesn’t matter. She has no idea how to go about terrorizing this girl she used to call her friend. She wants to scare her, hurt her, make her absolutely agonized with anxiety, until she can do nothing but wait for the sun to come up. But how? How did she do it at the cemetery?

The phone lights up again, startling them both. Kira scrabbles to grab it. The too-bright screen illuminates her face as she smiles, casting odd shadows along the lines of her face. To Allison’s surprise, she puts the phone to her ear. “Hey, Scott.”

 _Scott? Scott is calling her at ten at night?_ Something spikes through Allison’s chest, an emotion that feels disturbingly sincere. Pain. Jealousy. Loss?

She used to be the girl Scott called at night. Hell, she used to be the girl Isaac called at night, too. She used to be alive to take those calls, alive to talk to them for hours and hours about everything and nothing. This used to be her, and she used to be happy.

Kira snuggles down deeper into her bedspread. “I’m actually going to bed right now.” A pause. She laughs at something Allison can’t hear. “Because I have to get up early tomorrow. It’s not actually that weird. You’re just used to keeping up with Stiles and his insane, non-existent weekend sleep schedule.”

Another pause.

“Scott, he called me at three in the morning last week.”

A third pause. Allison has not moved, has barely even blinked since this conversation began.

“Because he was trying to call _you_. He misdialed. Probably because he was so hopped up on Adderall and sleep deprivation he couldn’t see straight.”

This is it. This is what will help Allison channel her inner poltergeist. This rage, this envy bubbling up inside her. It’s empowering. It gives her motivation, gives her confidence.

She steps over to Kira’s bed, reaching out her hand. Her fingers almost glow in the dark, white and translucent and bone-thin.

“Don’t play dumb with me, McCall, I know you guys are—“

Allison hooks her fingers around Kira’s throat, almost cradling it. It’s softer, gentler than the full-on attack from before, but it doesn’t make any difference. She still makes delicious contact. Kira’s eyes still widen, her mouth going slack and her breath hitching in a series of anxious gasps.

 _Say goodbye,_ Allison thinks, tightening her hand slightly. _Tell him you’re tired, because you are. You want to sleep._ She’s running on pure instinct, at this point. She’s letting her emotions guide her through this, and her emotions are telling her she wants _control_. Control she hasn’t had lately.

She sure has it now.

“I’m…tired, Scott. I really do have to get up early tomorrow.” Kira’s voice is quiet and subdued, but over a tinny phone call, it will almost certainly come off as exhausted. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

The call ends. The phone is put on the nightstand and quickly falls asleep. When it does, the darkness returns in full force, even dampening the dim glow of streetlights from outside.

Allison should really focus on Kira’s fears, or maybe even classic, generic fears, the stuff of B-movie fame. But when she tries to come up with ideas, only one thing comes to mind. She imagines dirt filtering into Kira’s bed, clumps of it skittering across her sheets, under her body. It smears into the soft fabric. It sticks to Kira’s skin, filling all her crevices. It consumes her.

Kira starts to fidget, her hands sweeping across her sheets like she’s trying to clear something off of it. Her feet start kicking lightly. The movements jolt her whole body, but her head remains still, tethered by Allison’s hand lightly circled around her neck.

She whimpers. Allison smiles.

It takes a while. Every passing minute is annoyingly slow to Allison’s charged nerves. Even if the slow build is more satisfying in the end, she can’t help but wish she could get to the terror part right away.

She doesn’t have to wait long, though. She can tell the panic is setting in. Kira’s whimpering gets louder, her hands and feet moving faster and faster until she’s practically thrashing. She tries to sit up and throw the covers off, but Allison climbs on top of her, straddling her waist, her whole body lighting up as it experiences touch for the first time in this life. It’s amazing. It’s enlightening. She’s _touching_ someone.

More. She needs more.

So she imagines worms, beetles, ants, wriggling and crawling and itching their way up Kira’s body. Kira’s moans turn into gasps and cries, shouts of surprise and revulsion. She tries even harder to sit up, but Allison has weight, now. She’s invisible, but she’s corporeal. And the longer Kira struggles, the longer she exudes fear, the stronger and more powerful Allison feels.

The dirt is closing in. Swallowing Kira whole. The bugs, the dirt, the rocks, they’re all burying her alive in her own bed, in the safety of her own bedroom.

Somewhere in the back of her head, past all the excitement and vicious glee, Allison realizes what’s going on. She’s projecting. Kira is experiencing nothing more than an illusion, images and sensations that are all in her head.

Kira is screaming now. They’re not very loud, just gasping screams powered by the minimal air making its way through Kira’s panicked lungs. The neighbors won’t hear, and no one will come looking, but it doesn’t matter, because Allison is loving every second of it.

The panic and horror Kira is feeling, the thrashing ache of being trapped? It’s what Allison felt when she crawled her way out of her own grave. Even now, she remembers it perfectly, can picture what the suffocating darkness looked like, what the dirt felt like against her sallow skin. Funny, how sweet it feels to conjure up those feelings in someone else.

Or at least, it’s sweet until Kira suddenly goes still, her limbs loose and relaxed.

Allison frowns. Her eyes had gone unfocused in her haze, so she hadn’t noticed Kira’s eyes rolling into the back of her head before closing, her jaw going slack, her tense neck softening so her head is tilted back.

For one endless second, Allison thinks she’s dead. She thinks she recognizes the stillness, the sudden relaxing of all her muscles, the gust of breath that escapes her mouth when it falls open.

Did Allison just _kill_ a girl? A girl who used to be her friend?

It’s only been about a month since Allison died, but it feels like millennia. And this is the first time, in all those eternal years, that Allison has felt her conscience prickle at her nerves. Revenge and retribution are practically old friends, at this point, but she’s never killed in their name before. It’s different from causing pain and fear, different from suffering. It’s the end. The exact thing that led her to where she is now.

For one endless second, she feels human again. A skeleton of guilt starts to construct itself inside her, unfamiliar and unwelcome in her new decaying body.

But then the endless second ends. Kira isn’t dead after all; her chest is still rising and falling with each steady breath. She passed out. That’s it, pure and simple. Probably from the constant barrage of fear and over-stimulation she’s being put through right now.

It’s hard to feel bad about that. There are worse things in the world.

Allison detaches herself Kira’s body. There’s a dark stain on the top of the bedspread, smeared on by Allison’s blood-stained sweater. It’s weird, seeing physical evidence of her own mess on someone else. It makes the injuries feel more real. Makes _her_ feel more real.

She feels stronger for it. Her movements have more force behind them, and the aches and stabbing pains throughout her body are less sharp. There might even be a thread of satisfaction running through her body. Not quite happiness, but more than enough for her.

Basically, she feels _good_.

Kira’s phone buzzes on her nightstand. Allison leans across the bed to peek at the screen, narrowing her eyes when she sees _Scott_ flashing across the top. It’s a text.

 _What would he have to say to her this late?_  

Without thinking, Allison reaches over to turn the phone towards her so she can read it.

The phone is smooth and light under her fingertips, the screen slightly warm.  She’s picking it up and cradling it in her palm before she realizes what’s happening.

She’s touching it. She’s _touching_ something.

She almost drops it in surprise.

Her fingers should have bounced away from the phone’s surface. They should have been repelled by whatever unknown magnetic force makes it impossible for her to touch things. That’s what happens every time she tries, and that’s what has _always_ happened, ever since she got above ground. But the phone in her hands is very real.

She slides open the lock and reads the text. **_Stiles just called to see if he could come over and play the new DLC. It’s almost midnight. Help me._**

Allison peers over the phone at Kira’s unconscious body. The girl looks even worse than she did this afternoon at the cemetery. There are dark shadows under her eyes, her skin is pale and sallow, and her lips look dry and cracked. She looks depleted, like a battery drained of its energy.

All that energy had to go somewhere, right?

Allison looks back down at the phone in her hands.

And smiles.

\-------

The doorbell rings at eight in the morning. Allison nearly jumps out of her skin at the sound, too engrossed in early morning cartoons to have noticed the sound of footsteps approaching the door. Everything already feels so surreal -- she’s watching television for the first time in what feels like forever, sitting in a place that’s not her own grave, and she has a bowl of untouched popcorn at her side that tastes like dirt and decay but stands as a testament to her newfound tangibility -- and now there’s a visitor at the door. Another person. The second in twenty-four hours. 

She thinks about not answering it. Kira is still passed out, and she hasn’t shown any signs of waking up. Once she discovered that her newfound energy allowed her to move further than ten feet away from Kira herself, Allison began enjoying free reign of the empty house. She started out just exploring, but someone else’s house can only be entertaining for so long. So she moved on to doing dumb poltergeist shit, like rearranging furniture and writing cruel messages on the wall with her own coagulating blood. Breaking wine bottles against the kitchen wall was probably her favorite part, though. There’s something satisfying about shattering glass and covering the floor in puddles of dark red.

But it’s paltry stuff. A distraction, a reprieve. She’s still angry and restless, still has that itch under her skin that’s been simmering since she woke up. And worse than that, she can already feel her extra strength starting to fade away. She can’t just stay in this house forever.

When she reaches out for the front door, her hand meets resistance. Not quite like it was before, but enough to make it difficult, like reaching for something through a thick layer of syrup. She grits her teeth and clenches her other fist. Eventually, her fingers force their way through and twist the knob.

The door drifts open. Malia is standing on the front step, hand raised to knock again, eyebrows drawn down in surprise. She looks good, too. Healthy and whole, like Kira had been. Strong. The kind of strength that comes from within, not from someone else, not stolen in the dead of night.

“Kira?” Malia calls out, stepping inside. If a door opening seemingly by itself puts her on edge, she doesn’t show it. Allison’s eyes flit between Malia and the doorway to the kitchen.

The kitchen is where she did the most damage, with the wine bottles and her own blood. The living room, where they’re standing is where she rearranged furniture. Will Malia know that, though? Will she recognize that something is different? What if she walks into the kitchen and sees all of Allison’s destruction?

Malia just marches back towards Kira’s bedroom, moving too quickly to not be familiar with the layout of the house, but her face showing no signs that something is amiss. Apparently, Allison is in the clear. She follows Malia into the hallway, the corners of her mouth twitching down.

She doesn’t like seeing Malia alive and well any more than she did with Kira, but there’s no anger besides that. She barely even knew the girl, beyond her parentage. There’s nothing in their (barely) shared history that would lend itself to the kind of monstrous rage she felt towards Kira.

It’s disappointing.  

Malia stands over Kira with her hands on the other girl’s shoulders, mouth right next to her ear. “Hey, wake up. You promised to teach me how to fight.” She shakes her hard. “Hey, Kira!”

Kira’s eyes flutter open, but only briefly. She mumbles quietly, almost whining, before letting her eyes drift shut again. She looks even worse in the bright light of morning than she did last night. The bruises under her eyes stand out more, and her gaunt cheekbones cast unhealthy shadows along her face. Even her hair looks different, less of a shiny black and more of a dull gray.

Malia is starting to pick up on it, too. Her scowl deepens, a hint of concern leeching in. It’s an uncomfortable look for her, like it doesn’t quite fit her features, like she’s not used to expressing it. “Kira, are you okay? Is this…are you hungover or something? Are you on a…bender?”

Allison raises an eyebrow. Malia reminds her of her own demonic self, weirdly enough. She’s a fish out of water the same way Allison was when she crawled up out of the ground. And just like Allison, she’s learning to live in a body she’s not used to, following rules she doesn’t understand. Malia probably only learned about hangovers and benders recently. What would it be like to have a gap in learning and experience that stretches over half your life?

Kira whimpers again. She opens her eyes, and this time they stay open, bleary and unfocused. “Malia?”

“Alright, this isn’t normal. I’ve seen you in the mornings, you’re disgustingly chipper.” Malia jerks her head in a nod, like a decision has been made. “I’m taking you to Scott. He’ll know what to do.”

She scoops Kira into her arms like she weighs nothing and strides outside, her steps long-legged and confident. So sure of herself and her plan.

The smarter idea, Allison reasons, would have been to take Kira to Deaton. The older man is actually trained for this sort of thing, and Scott is just his protégé. But Malia either didn’t think of it or didn’t care. To her, Scott is the right answer.

Her absolute faith in him is startling. Even when Allison was alive, it was difficult for her to reconcile the cute, floppy-haired boy that lent her a pen on her first day of school with the grown Alpha he’s become. It wasn’t that long ago he could barely control himself on the full moon. Now he’s teaching others? Leading them?

When she was alive, it made her proud. Boyfriend or not, she had been proud to know Scott, to be part of his pack, to be someone he respected and trusted. She knew what it was like to feel weak, powerless, and laughably in over your head. To watch him overcome that, to overcome it alongside him, had been a pleasure.

Yeah, she had been proud of Scott in life. Now, though? He’s still leading. Still growing. He’s won the loyalty of a girl who spent her formative years as a coyote, the epitome of a solitary animal. Not to mention he’s dating a kitsune. And god knows Stiles will always be by his side. Lydia, too, at least for now. Derek. Isaac. The twins. Scott is apparently getting better and better, attracting people to his side like ducklings, moving on with his life.

Moving on from Allison.

Anger is an old friend, at this point. She relishes its return to her body, shivering happily at the familiar heat, the slightly uncomfortable prickle on her dead nerves. It’s stronger than it was with Kira. More intense. Then again, that’s how it’s always been between her and Scott. Any emotion that ran between them was strong, all-consuming, unavoidable. Love. Loyalty. Hatred. All of it.

She’s glad Malia showed up. Kira was fun for a night, but maybe it’s time Allison ups the ante. Kira isn’t the only once-friend in Beacon Hills, and she’s not the only one Allison has a problem with.

Allison follows closely behind Malia as she carries Kira down the street, careful not to stretch out the black vapor still tethering her to the kitsune. The pain is just starting to come back, a reminder that whatever she stole from Kira is draining.

The werecoyote makes it to Scott’s house surprisingly fast, considering she’s on foot and carrying over a hundred pounds of dead weight. She doesn’t even look out of breath, either. She may be unused to her new teenaged body, but she apparently knows how to stay in shape.

Once she’s on Scott’s front porch, she doesn’t even bother knocking. After awkwardly adjusting her grip on Kira, she turns the knob and shoulders the door open, Allison slipping in right before she kicks it closed.

Kira’s house had been new, unexplored territory. Allison had no memories tied to it, nothing to remind her of her life before, but Scott’s house is familiar. She’s been here more times than she can count: in the kitchen with his mother; in the family room with their friends, studying and goofing off; in Scott’s bedroom, tangled in his sheets, young and stupid and disgustingly in love.

She never thought she’d be back here, though. And definitely not like this.

Malia doesn’t even call out for Scott or announce her presence, just stomps up the stairs without a word, her boots clomping loudly in the morning silence. Kira is still mostly limp in her arms, her eyes twitching open and closed at random intervals.

Allison wants to walk around a bit, see if there are any noticeable changes to the house, but her leash pulls uncomfortably at her waist. She follows Malia’s lead, her feet making no noise on the sensitive staircase, not a single groan, creak, or squeal. When she reaches out to touch the wooden railing, her fingers bounce back.

Her nostrils flare. Looks like she’s back to being intangible.

She snaps back to attention at the sound of another door bursting open. Malia is already halfway inside Scott’s bedroom, growling at someone to move so she can place Kira on top of the bedspread.

She’s blocking Allison’s line of sight. All she can see are flailing limbs and flashes of fabric, and part of her wants to leave. She doesn’t want to see Scott again. Right now, or ever.

But a bigger part of her wants to stay. She _does_ want to see him. Visiting Kira turned out well, didn’t it? Maybe it’s time for a repeat performance.

Kira has already been deposited at the foot of the bed, her dull hair spreading out like a fan on top of the quilt. Malia moves aside just in time for Allison to see Scott scramble out from under the covers. He crawls over to Kira’s side on his knees, surprisingly graceful for someone who just woke up.

His face contorts into nauseating concern, brows furrowed, lips parted. His hand flutters down to rest on top of Kira’s head, large and attentive. “What’s wrong with her?” he asks. “Is she okay?”

Allison frowns. There may as well be a neon sign flashing over his head that says _I care about this girl_. She should know. It used to flash over his head whenever he saw _her_.

The idea of Scott with another girl used to freak her out. She would fret, she would worry, she would exude angst and melodrama at impractical levels, practically making herself sick over the idea of Scott dating someone else. That’s what teenagers do, right? They obsess. Then she and Isaac found each other, and watching Scott with Kira wasn’t so bad. It didn’t feel like one person walking away from another. It didn’t feel like being left behind.

But the game has changed. She’s not with Isaac anymore. She’s not with anyone. She’s right back where she started, back to being left behind. And not just by Scott – by everyone.

“I found her like this,” Malia says, shrugging. “She was just laying in bed, looking like half-dead roadkill, so I thought I’d bring her to you.” She pauses, chewing the inside of her cheek. “I was….worried.”

Allison has to wonder if those words have ever come out of her mouth.

“That’s good, it’s good you brought her here,” a new voice chimes in.

Allison hadn’t noticed Stiles heaving himself up from the floor on the other side of Scott’s bed. She hadn’t noticed that he was there at all, actually, but it doesn’t exactly surprise her. It wouldn’t be the first time one of them has passed out on the other’s floor after a long night of something doing something dumb. They’re practically roommates, at this point.

The two of them hem and haw for a few minutes, taking Kira’s pulse, feeling her head for a fever like they’re somebody’s mother. But it’s obvious to Allison, and eventually to the entire room, that they have no idea what’s wrong. It’s clear that Kira’s not sick, not in a normal way. What Allison did to her isn’t natural, and it definitely shows. The problem is, they have no idea what that means.

So they do what they should have done in the first place: they decide to go to Deaton.

It’s a breath of normalcy. Here she is, a silent observer to the progress that’s gone on while she was buried in the ground, and suddenly it feels like nothing has changed. Scott and Stiles don’t know what to do, as usual. Stiles is talking a mile a minute while Scott just stares at him with a look of concentrated attention, as usual. And then the two of them are piling into that shitty blue Jeep so they can go ask Beacon Hills’ resident Jedi master about what the hell is going on. As usual. The only thing separating this moment from any other moment over the past few years is Kira’s half-conscious body in the backseat. And Malia.

Malia, who decides to stay behind so she can run to Lydia’s and tell her what’s going on. Who strides confidently over to Stiles before he can climb into the driver’s seat and grabs him by the shirt collar. Who plants a quick, comfortable kiss on his lips before bounding away down the road, strands of sandy hair escaping her braid with each step.

Stiles and Malia. Allison didn’t see that one coming.

Sure, she knew that Scott and Stiles were the ones who found Malia in coyote form. And yeah, Stiles and Malia ran into each other when he was an inpatient at Eichen House, and supposedly they’d had a _moment._ Or more likely, a series of moments, involving various body parts.

But this wasn’t like that. This wasn’t weird sexual tension. This wasn’t dangerous, adrenaline-driven affection brought about for all the wrong reasons. This was a quick, inconsequential kiss. The kind that means they don’t feel the need to take advantage of the moment, because there are many more moments to come. 

It’s the kind of kiss you give when you’re in an honest-to-god relationship. Boyfriend, girlfriend, sharing locker combos and disgustingly cute pictures, studying together and “studying together” with the door firmly closed.

They’re dating. Stiles and Malia are dating.

And Allison hates it.

She scrambles into the car right as Scott leans across Kira’s body to slam the door shut. When she leans back against Kira’s legs, which are sprawled all the way across the seats, her dead nerves spark with an uncomfortable buzzing, like tiny needles pricking at her skin. It’s painful and uncomfortable, so she scoots forward until she’s perched on the edge of her seat.

Stiles is right in front of her in the driver’s seat, the pale skin of his neck peeking out from under the headrest just inches in front of her nose. Allison grits her teeth as a phantom heart beats in her chest, racing faster and faster in frustration.

Stiles has a girlfriend. This is the guy who, not even a few months ago, was possessed by an evil fox spirit. He terrorized his school, terrorized his community, and put his family and friends through hell. He hurt people, he _killed_ people.

He killed _her_. Him and those damn Oni.

And now he’s got the good luck to be in a relationship? He should be neck-deep in years of therapy after the stunts he pulled, but apparently he’s doing just fine. Apparently his life is a lot happier and a lot _lighter_ than she ever would have expected, or hoped for.

What kind of justice is that?

She’s running on instinct again. She remembers how lashing out at Kira, physically, was enough to bond them together in the cemetery. She remembers the overwhelming rage, the irrational, almost inhuman surge of primal aggression that channeled through her fingertips. And she remembers the good that came out of it, the sheer pleasure, the strength, the _tangibility_.

Her fingers sneak in through the gap under the headrest and come to rest against his neck. It’s not the violent collision of the cemetery. It’s more of a caress, subtle and parasitic. All of it, everything she’s feeling, trickles down thick as tar to the tips of her fingers, to the sharpened points of her dirty nails. It pushes through his skin, into his bloodstream, and she can practically see it oozing its way back down to his heart.

And just like that, it’s done. The black vapor trail connecting her to Kira has dissipated, and a new one has formed linking her to the driver’s seat. Or more specifically, the driver.

It’s barely a blip on Stiles’ radar. She feels him shiver slightly, watches as goose-bumps rise up across his neck. But other than those primal, bodily responses, he’s completely unaware. Allison attacked Kira with intense force, and the girl definitely noticed. Here, though, she slipped in through the cracks, and Stiles is none the wiser.

It’s perfect. Even if it reinforces the discouraging idea that she can’t exist without being tethered to something, like a balloon that will float away without it’s string.

The Jeep screeches to a halt in Deaton’s parking lot, and they all pile out. Even in the few minutes since Allison severed their connection, Kira has already started to revive. She manages to stand on her own two feet, and her cheeks are stained red with healthy color.

Scott still helps her inside, though, his arm around her waist while her own is slung across his shoulders. His movements are gentle, his touch soft but firm in a way only he can seem to manage. It reminds Allison of the first time she ever visited this dump. She’d just hit a dog with her car and was crying about it, like the damsel in a damn soap opera. And he’d comforted her like a champ, all sweet words and doe eyes hidden under floppy hair and overlarge clothes. He’d picked an eyelash off her face, for god’s sake. And she’d lapped it up like the sucker she was, all the awkward flirting and ridiculous puppy love that seems so attractive at that age.

She slips through the door right behind Stiles, practically stepping on his heels to make it in time. Hopefully her tangibility will last longer this time, once she can get Stiles alone and asleep. She misses being able to open and close doors on her own.

The group meanders their way into a back room filled with cages, where Deaton is doling out dog food.

When Allison steps in behind them, it’s like walking into smoke. Her steps falter until she’s frozen in the doorway, eyes wide.

The room looks exactly the same as it did when she was last here – small, crowded, a claustrophobic mix of concrete and shiny metal – but the air is heavy and thick with tension. She can sense distrust and aggression being thrown her way, almost to the point of animosity. Some weird sixth sense is telling her that something in here is afraid of her. Something wants her gone and dead and buried in the ground.

With a start, she realizes it’s the dogs. They can see her.

At first, they just stare at her in eerie silence. There’s a burning intensity in their eyes that Allison doesn’t understand. It raises her hackles and puts her on edge. She’d almost forgotten what it’s like to be looked at, to be _seen_ , but this isn’t exactly how she wanted to be reminded.

One of them, a pitbull by the door, snarls in her direction. Then a dachshund across the aisle lets out a high-pitched yap, and it’s like the floodgates have opened. Within seconds, every cage is vibrating with a chaotic chorus of barks and growls. The smaller dogs pace around in agitated circles, while the bigger ones paw at the metal bars of their cage doors. Some of them snap their teeth at her, spit flying from their mouths.

Deaton stumbles back in surprise, recoiling from the border collie yapping in his face. Stiles nearly falls on his ass trying to get away from a snarling German Shepherd. Even Kira, who’s awake but clearly groggy, picks up her head at the onslaught, her eyes finally coming into focus.

Scott’s eyes burn deep Alpha red. His growl is soft and understated, but all the dogs take notice, their raucous noise cutting off like someone pulled a plug.

They don’t stop staring, though. And while the others are too caught up to notice, Deaton isn’t.

He’s staring at her, too.

More accurately, he’s staring at the space a couple millimeters from her head, but it’s close enough to put her on edge. He must have noticed the dogs’ intense focus and followed their gazes. Does he know she’s there? How could he? He can’t possibly know who she is, right?

What if he knows _what_ she is, though? Or _why_ she is?

It’s a surreal thing, to consider your mortality after you’ve died. But she knows Deaton, she’s seen what he can do. If anyone could come up with answers even she doesn’t have, it’s him. And he would most certainly use them to get rid of her.

She slides over to stand next to Stiles. The dogs follow her with their eyes, and so does Deaton. He tilts his head thoughtfully.

Allison can’t meet the vet’s gaze without chills crawling up and down her spine, so she watches Stiles’ profile instead. His eyes are twitching between Scott and Deaton, waiting for an explanation.

“So are we giving the dogs uppers, now?” he asks, sarcasm thick in his voice. “Is that a new veterinary practice?” He turns around in a circle, frowning at the animals as if finally noticing something. “Are they staring at me? Why are they staring at me?”

 _They’re not_ , Allison thinks, just as Deaton says, “I don’t know, but I think we should take this discussion into the other room.”

Allison has never been more grateful to have the black vapor pull her along.

Deaton moves them into the examination room, which is free of animals, and helps Scott hoist Kira up onto the metal table. She’s sitting upright by herself, but she doesn’t look steady. Her hands white-knuckle the edge of the table to help keep her balance.

“So Kira is looking a little worse for wear,” Deaton says casually, like it’s not completely obvious. He’s remarkably calm, too, considering they just witnessed dozens of dogs lose their shit for no apparent reason. “Can anyone tell me why?”

Scott and Stiles have no clue, and say as much. But they’re not the ones Allison is worried about.

It hadn’t occurred to her before, when Kira was semi-conscious and largely uncommunicative, that the girl may actually remember something. She had no inkling of Allison’s presence before she ended her call with Scott, but that might have changed once Allison started in on her. She hallucinated being buried alive, in horrifyingly vivid detail. That’s not something you can ignore, right? She had to have wondered what caused it.

“I….” Kira looks down at her lap, hair hiding her expression from the others. “I think I had a nightmare or something.”

Allison gives an airless snort. A nightmare?

The others are just as incredulous. “Kira,” Scott says slowly. “When Malia found you, you were passed out. And weak. You can barely hold yourself up right now.”

“But I’m already feeling better,” Kira counters, and it’s true. She doesn’t look nearly as pale and drained as she did ten minutes ago.  

“I don’t like it,” Stiles says, his hands twitching in random gestures. “Feels shifty. Shiftable. Like something is shifting.”

 “Did you eat or drink anything suspicious?” the vet asks, lowering his head slightly to meet Kira’s downturned eyes. “Or did anything strange happen yesterday? Even the smallest detail could help.”

Kira hunches her shoulders, tilting her face away from Scott. “I, um, visited Allison’s grave yesterday. But other than that, no, nothing weird. Just a normal day.”

In any other circumstance, Allison would be viciously pleased at the pain that radiates from Scott and Stiles at the mention of her grave. It’s sweet, sweet satisfaction, everything she’s ever dreamed of. They _should_ be mourning her, damn it.

But it’s not her priority right now.

 _Shit, shit, shit,_ she thinks, panicked.Will Deaton be able to put the pieces together? Will he connect this sudden illness with her grave? Should she be scared?

Scott turns to Deaton, visibly shaking off the sudden gloom. “Do you have any idea what could do something like that? Was it wolfsbane poisoning?”

The vet’s expression gives nothing away. “Could be. We don’t have a lot to work with,” he says, shrugging his shoulder slightly. “We need more information.”

 _That’s not an answer_ , Allison thinks, eyes narrowing.

Scott seems to realize the same thing. He eyes his boss thoughtfully before biting his cheek and turning back to Kira. “Okay, then. Until we figure this out, you should rest. Let’s get you out of here.”

Kira hops off the table, almost falling over when her feet hit the floor. She rubs the palm of her hand into her eye and shakes her head as if to clear it. “Can we stop by the store on the way back to my house? I want to get—“

“You’re staying with me,” Scott interrupts, brow furrowing like it’s a foregone conclusion. “What if something happens again? You shouldn’t be by yourself.”

Kira blinks up at him. “Oh. Okay. Will your mom mind?”

Scott puts his arm back around her waist, concentrating on their feet as they move towards the door. “Nah, she’s working a double tonight. Won’t be home ‘til tomorrow morning.”

Kira stumbles again, but Allison suspects it has less to do with her exhaustion and more to do with the blush spreading rapidly down her face and neck. “Oh, um…okay. Just the two of us, then. Alone.”

Stiles smirks and crosses his arms. “Scandalous.”

Scott finally looks up, confused. It takes him a few seconds to get it, but when he does, he winces. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he mutters, making Stiles laugh.

Allison wants to find it funny. Scott is just as sex-crazed as any boy his age, but he also has a habit of being disturbingly naïve sometimes, and it used to make her absolutely _melt_. Now, it’s just annoying. Like Stiles’ laugh, or Kira’s blush.

Or the way Deaton is still staring in Stiles’ direction, like he can sense her lurking presence. He’s looking to the left of Stiles when Allison’s actually on his right, but it doesn’t matter. She feels vulnerable, and she doesn’t like it.

 _Let’s go_ , she thinks venomously.

Stiles shudders slightly. When he speaks, though, he’s as boisterous as ever. “I’d better drive these two crazy kids home, then. See you later, doc.”

With that, the three of them file out of the room, Allison in tow. As ridiculous and impossible as it is, she can almost _feel_ Deaton’s stare on the back of her neck.

She lived her past few years as a hunter. She was the one who went out on the offensive, the one who chased her prey and took it down, calculated and efficient.

She can’t help but wonder if she’s about to experience being on the other side of the equation.

\-------

The frustrating thing about Stiles is that he _doesn’t sleep_. Like, _at all_ , apparently.

That should’ve been common knowledge, but it still somehow surprises her. She always assumed he caught a few hours here and there, if only so his organs didn’t shut down and his hair didn’t fall out. It always seemed reasonable.

But here she is, at three in the morning, sitting on Stiles’ bed with her knees hugged up to her chest, watching as Stiles feverishly pores over something on his laptop. At first she thought it was something to do with the Kira’s “inexplicable” illness, but it turns out it’s just an essay for AP Lang.

Allison remembers playing that game, too, when she was alive. She’d spend her days and nights dealing with supernatural, and then try to squeeze in some homework once in a while so she didn’t fail out of high school.

It didn’t really work out for her, did it? She still didn’t finish high school.

When Stiles is doing his homework, though, it means he isn’tsleeping. And if the Adderall he just popped in his mouth is any indication, he’s not slowing down any time soon.

It’d be a lot easier if she could mess with him while he was awake. She certainly _feels_ angry and resentful enough to do it, but she already tried that. Sometimes around midnight, she had lost her patience and tried to grab him, her fingers extending like talons around his neck. She was repelled.

So she’s stuck here. Trapped within a ten-foot radius. Forced to sit and watch someone do their homework. Who knew you could die of boredom after you were already dead?

It’s almost half past three when Stiles finally pushes his office chair back from his desk. He throws his hands up in triumph and whoops. “Bam. Done. That’s right, Poisonwood Bible, I’ve just made you my bitch.”

Allison rolls her eyes. Her frown feels crooked and bitter. _You haven’t changed a bit._

She shouldn’t complain, though. At least he’s done with his stupid assignment.

Stiles pulls himself back up to his laptop. This time, when he opens the internet, his search isn’t school-related. He pulls up a folder of bookmarks titled _SUPERNATURAL STUFF_ and clicks one of the links. The website that pops up is on wolfsbane. Allison watches as Stiles clicks his way down a list of different species, carefully reading their effects on various creatures. It’s all very methodical, actually. The internet really _does_ have all the answers.

Including the answers to what’s going on in Stiles’ head: he thinks Kira was poisoned by wolfsbane.

It makes sense. Wolfsbane causes hallucinations and has adverse affects on a creature’s health, both of which fit the minimal details Kira gave them. Not to mention it’s something they’ve dealt with before, and something anyone can find if they know where to look.

Wolfsbane. It’s a perfect cover.

 “This had to have been it, right?” Stiles mutters out loud. “What else could it have been?”

 _Wouldn’t you like to know_ , Allison thinks.

He stares at the screen for a couple more minutes, brow furrowed in consternation. It looks like the answers don’t come to him, though, because he sighs and buries his head in his hands, shaking it gently from side to side. He looks tired. Not the supernatural kind of tired that Kira was, but the normal, sleep-deprived kind. His already pale skin is even whiter in the glow of the monitor, making him almost as ghostly as she is.

 _Bed time_ , Allison thinks forcefully, not for the first time.

Stiles freezes. “Just one more thing,” he murmurs. He pulls up a document entitled _EMISSARY STUFF_.

It’s Allison’s turn to furrow her brow. From what she can tell, it’s personal notes on exactly what it sounds like: emissary stuff. What they do, how they do it, how they get their supplies, how they train. Most of it is probably from Deaton, although a couple of lines include footnotes to books and websites.

Is Stiles considering becoming an emissary?

She shouldn’t be surprised. Stiles is as entrenched in all this bullshit as any actual werewolf, so it’s not like he’s looking for an escape. Not to mention he and Scott are so far up each other’s asses, an Alpha-Emissary bond between the two of them would change almost nothing.

Still, she didn’t expect this. She doesn’t _like_ this. It goes back to what her problem with him was in the first place, what her problem with _everyone_ is right now.

He’s moving on.

He should be a wreck, like she is. He should be suffering the dire consequences of his actions, like she is. Instead, he’s still in school, still thriving. He has a girlfriend. And now he’s taking the next step towards an evolution.

He’s growing up.

Allison was always the old lady of the group. Being held back a year made it a pretty common occurrence no matter what friends she found at school, and Beacon Hills was no exception.

How long until her friends are finally older than she was? A couple months? Will she still be around to watch them all turn eighteen? Will she have to watch them become adults, which is something she’ll never be?

She’s reaching out again before she can stop herself. It shouldn’t work, there’s no reason it would after all her failed attempts, but that doesn’t stop her fingers from landing softly on the skin of Stiles’ neck. It’s a soft touch, barely there at all, but it’s all Allison needs.

Maybe she was wrong, before. Maybe her emotions hadn’t been strong enough, _active_ enough, to latch onto Stiles the way she did with Kira. Maybe her body was just waiting for a stressor to trigger her newfound abilities. It’s not like she has any clue how this works.

All she knows is that thinking about Stiles growing older, finding happiness and love and fulfillment with his family and friends when only a couple weeks ago he was smiling smugly as people dropped like flies all around him….it makes her hate him. Not the angry, violent hatred she felt with Kira, that made her lash out blindly in an effort to cause her pain. It’s quieter than that. It’s a bone-deep connection between the two of them, something that can only be formed when one person is directly responsible for the other’s death.

It’s a vendetta.

If Stiles didn’t notice her in the Jeep, he sure notices her now. His mouth drops open in shock and pain at her touch, his head ducking between his shoulders as he tries to pull away. “What the—“

But she doesn’t let go. She digs in deeper, nails sinking into his flesh, almost deep enough to draw blood.

She should’ve realized earlier: with Stiles, it’s easier. He doesn’t actually have to be asleep to believe he’s dreaming. He just has to _think_ he’s asleep.

 _Count your fingers, babe,_ Allison thinks sweetly. _Gotta make sure you’re not sleep-walking again, right?_

Stiles holds his shaking hands out in front of him. One by one, his voice cracking, he begins to count. “One….two….three….”

Allison counts with him. _Four….five….six…._

It’s when Stiles gets to the last finger and huffs out a relieved, “Ten,” that Allison pushes at him, concentrating with everything she has on that hand.

 _Eleven_.

“Eleven…” he breathes out. “Oh my god. No, no, not again. This can’t happen again.”

Allison feels powerful again. Whole. Like this is exactly where she’s supposed to be, exactly what she’s supposed to be doing. She watches with mild interest as Stiles scrambles for the cell phone sitting on the desk next to him, his trembling fingers missing a few times before swiping it open. It’s no surprise when he hits number two on his speed dial and holds it to his ear.

“Scott?” he asks frantically. “Scott, I need help, please help me.”

Allison leans in to eavesdrop. Scott’s voice is tinny over the shoddy cell reception. _“Stiles? What’s wrong?”_

“I think I’m asleep, Scott. I think I’m dreaming, sleep-walking, it’s happening again. I don’t know what to do, I thought this was _over_ —“

Scott starts talking again, probably offering to come over and comfort him, or something equally helpful and caring. But Allison’s claws are sunk deep in Stiles’ neck, so that’s not what he hears. She leans in close, her mouth right by Stiles’ ear, barely an inch away from the cell phone pressed to his ear.

_“Are you serious right now? Jesus Christ, Stiles, I can’t deal with this right now. Like it wasn’t bad enough the first time?”_

They’re not Allison’s words, not really. She still can’t talk. But she mouths along with them, and she knows they’re drifting all the way into Stiles’ brain, blocking out Scott’s actual voice. As of now, Stiles isn’t talking to his best friend. He’s talking to her.

“Scott, I….I don’t know why….” Stiles’ mouth works uselessly as he tries to find his words. “Scott, I’m scared. I need help.”

_“Get your dad. I’m busy, remember? Taking care of Kira?”_

“But….Scott, I can’t….”

_“Look, Stiles, I can’t do this again. I can’t run around chasing after you, not like last time. I’ve got other things to worry about, more important things. Not to mention you just got us in deep shit last time you did something like this.”_

Speechless. Allison has made Stiles speechless, maybe for the first time in her existence.

The boy looks so pained, so heart-broken, his eyes threatening to spill over with tears. Scott is his greatest weakness. “I didn’t know you….I’m sorry, Scott. I thought you knew that….when we talked about this you said….Scott?” He starts repeating the name over and over like a mantra, interspersing it with nonsense words.

_“Not now, Stiles. Just….wake yourself up or something. And come talk to me when you’ve got a handle on yourself. Kira and I are finally starting to be happy together, I don’t need you getting her killed like you did with—“_

With a choked gasp, Stiles rips the phone away from his ear and ends the call. His shaking hands are even worse now, and his breaths sound like marbles rattling around in his lungs.

 _Bed time,_ Allison thinks again. He wants to leave, she can feel him straining to walk towards the door, but her hold on him is tight.His knees wobble slightly when he stands up, but he manages to crawl over to the bed and flop on top of the covers.

Allison immediately straddles him, readjusting her grip on his throat.

With Kira, she took inspiration from her own nightmares. But with Stiles….there’s so much to work with inside his brain. Why waste time on her own demons?

It’s easier, too. She doesn’t have to extend as much effort making Stiles see the things she envisions, because she knows he’s already seen them. All she’s doing is tweaking them slightly. They’re memories that have barely had time to settle, so it’s as easy as skimming them off the top of his head.

Allison’s bony white hands become thick and clumsy, wrapped in stained beige cloth. Her sweater turns into a heavy, tattered jacket that smells like sweat and blood. She can feel her hair molding to her scalp, pressed there by the heavy bandages wrapping themselves around her entire head. Her teeth are no longer hers; they’re tiny and sharp, needles sticking out through her gums like broken bones.

She isn’t Allison anymore, not on the surface. She’s the Nogitsune. Or at least, the horrible bandage-wrapped monster version of it.

Stiles’ reaction is delightful, his entire body seizing as he tries to throw himself off the bed and escape. She doesn’t let him, though, pinning him down and relishing her power to do so.

This body she’s imagining has a brutal history. Burnt to death, brought back to life, made to become an instrument of destruction and chaos? She made Kira relive the death of a lost loved one; maybe she’ll made Stiles relive the death of the one who started it all.

The fire starts low in her belly, embers that are in danger of being snuffed. But she wills them to burn bright, infuses them with all her own poisonous emotions as she tries imagining the vitriol that must have filled this man before his death. The heat expands inside her, until it _is_ her, until it’s licking the edges of the bandages like a caress.

She focuses one last time on the boy trapped under her. His eyes are shut tight, his mouth screwed up in a grimace, whimpers trailing from his lips in tiny breaths. She wants to scare him, to overwhelm him, to make him suffer and take the power that his suffering will give her.

 _Open your eyes_ , she thinks.

He does.

The fire explodes from her body, turning her imagined skin into a roaring inferno and turning the sheets around them black and charred. It smells like burnt skin and hair, fabric turned to ash, blood seared into vapor. It’s not real, of course. She can’t cause Stiles any actual damage. She can only plant the idea in his head.

But he doesn’t know that. He screams, loud and long and hoarse, renewing his efforts to get away from the fire he thinks will consume him. She’s never seen this much terror in a human being, and it’s absolutely _delicious_. Soaking it up like sunshine, she makes the flames bigger, makes the heat hotter. What’s he feeling right now? Does he feel like he’s burning? Or does he feel nothing, and it’s just the sight of it that’s driving him over the edge?

Either way, it’s filling her with strength, just like with Kira. More than with Kira, in fact. She already feels more tangible, way past where she ended up with the kitsune.

She opens her mouth, rotten and filled with those needle-teeth, and shrieks silently in his face.

Before she can go any farther, though, the bedroom door slams open, and the light flickers on. Allison whirls around, shocked, nearly losing her grip on Stiles’ neck.

It’s the Sheriff. He’s dressed in his uniform, the gun still on his belt. He’s alert right now, but she can see the bags under his eyes; he probably just got off a long shift.

And came home to his son screaming.

“Stiles!” The Sheriff rushes forward, and Allison looks back down at the boy in question.

He’s staring up at her. The fear is still in his eyes, but it’s mixing with confusion, heartbreak, and hurt. With a start, she realizes her illusion has faded, probably by her broken concentration. She’s back to looking like herself, and Stiles is _seeing_ her.

“Allison?” he asks, barely more than a whisper.

A hand grabs her by the arm. She’s too shocked to respond immediately, but when the Sheriff tries to pull her off of Stiles and onto the ground, her self-preservation kicks in. If she can be touched, she can be trapped, and what will happen to her then? They won’t want to keep her around, not when they’ve seen what she can do.

She pours all of her will-power into that word, into _escaping_ , because she is not letting these people send her away after all she’s been through.

She shuts her eyes and imagines feeling safe and secure, alone and happier for it. There’s no accompanying picture to go with it, no actual location in her head, but she closes her eyes and imagines it anyway.

With a rush of wind, the noises coming from the Sheriff and Stiles cut off. The air feels still. Stale. Like she’s in a tomb.

Her eyes open.

It’s her bedroom. The one in the penthouse. It’s dusk-dark and covered in dust, and some of her things have been removed or shifted, but it’s definitely hers.

The power from Stiles. It was interrupted, but she had felt it coursing through her rotting body, had felt the surge in strength it gave her, sparking along every nerve. Did it give her enough of a boost to _teleport_ (god help her) to another place? Something she’s never been able to do? It’s the best guess she can come up with right now, so she leaves it be, pushing it to the back of her mind.

She spins around in a slow circle, eyes wide as she takes it all in. Her bed, her closet, those curtains she picked out with Lydia. It’s all there, even the vanity—

The vanity with a giant mirror as its centerpiece. A giant mirror that shows her reflection.

She always figured she’d look a little worse for wear. She’s dead, after all, and there’s a giant, bleeding hole in the middle of her stomach.

But looking at her gaunt, horrific reflection in that vanity mirror, she can tell it’s more than that. Her hair is long and straggly, the strands stiff with blood and sweat. The blackened stain on the front of sweater stretches from the hem to just above her ribcage. Her skin isn’t the porcelain pale she’s used to, but the deathly kind, the kind that looks cold and rubbery. Her veins are sticking out all over her face, black and grotesque, like her blood has been replaced with oil. And her eyes…they’re not human anymore. They’re large and milky white, a viscous, rheumy substance leaking out from the corners.

She looks like a monster. She _is_ a monster.

And isn’t that what she wanted?

Allison tears herself away from the mirror, her eyes lighting on the bed instead.

It’s perfectly made. The sheets are tucked in with military precision she has never been capable of, and the decorative pillows are piled along the headboard in a picture-perfect arrangement straight out of a magazine.

Lying on top of the bedspread is a small collection of items, bunched together in the center. There are pictures, notes passed in class, ticket stubs from movies and concerts. Stacked in a precarious pile in the center are chunky envelopes, unsealed, with _Allison_ written on the fronts in different sets of handwriting. Perched on top of those is her old compound bow, a necklace hanging off of its strings.

It’s a shrine, she realizes. A private one, for her friends and her father and no one else. This is where they collected all their grief on little scraps of paper, pooled them together, and then….left it here.

This room hasn’t been visited in a while. The pictures and receipts and even the envelopes are all curling with age, some of the oldest ones starting to turn yellow. Is this is what’s left of her life on this earth? A pile of junk?

She perches on the side of the bed and picks something at random. It’s the photo strip from her and Scott’s date, however long ago. The one where his wolf eyes reflected too brightly, obscuring his face. The bottom one is ripped off, and she knows it’s tucked away somewhere in this room, a memento she hadn’t been able to get rid of after they broke up. She didn’t know Scott kept the other ones, though.

Not that it matters anymore. He doesn’t have it _now_ , does he? He left it in here to rot.

She crumples it in her fist before letting it fall down onto the bed. Her hands are itching to destroy everything else, but she holds off for a moment, grabbing one of the envelopes instead.

It’s from Lydia. The neat cursive is too distinct to be anyone else, too familiar after so many months of sharing class notes and comparing assignments and passing each other secret messages. Allison tugs the letter out of the envelope and unfolds it. It’s five pages front and back, clipped together with a paper-clip.

_Allison,_

_I don’t usually believe in these pop-psychology exercises. I mean, writing letters to the dead? What’s the reasoning behind it? Do they think you’ll actually see this? That’s ridiculous. But I made an exception, because you’re my ~~best friend~~ sister. There are so many things I need to say that I never got to_

Allison tosses it to the side before she can finish it. She doesn’t want this, doesn’t have the patience to deal with it. Lydia probably moved on with the rest of them. She probably hasn’t even thought about Allison in days. Why should Allison believe anything she says in her letter?

This should all make her happy. This shrine, these letters, the memories carefully tucked into each and every scrap of paper. This should show her that her friends care about her, that they grieved for her and mourned her loss.

But she’s just angry. All the time, every second of every hour, filled to the brim with rage she doesn’t want but can’t exist without. And it feels good, as long as she doesn’t fight it. So why should she fight it?

She picks up pictures and receipts by the handful, ripping them apart with wild abandon. Nothing is spared. Everything is wasted into tiny bits of confetti that drift back onto her bed like dust, the sounds extra loud in the muffled quiet of her abandoned room. She yanks at the string of her bow until it snaps. When she picks up the necklace, she’s furious to realize it’s the one Kate gave her, the one that supposedly as buried with her aunt months ago. _What a shitty way to honor my death_. She throws it across the room and under the vanity.

The first letter is in her hand (it’s Scott’s – the earnest, orderly print is definitely Scott’s)  ready to be shredded when she freezes, head perking up.

The penthouse is so quiet, so empty, that she can hear every creak of the handle, every squeal of the hinges when the front door opens. Every groan of the floorboards under the weight of someone’s steps is like gunfire, until they’re finally masked by the rug lying in the hallway.

Someone is walking towards her bedroom.  

She throws the letter aside and stands up. Stiles and the Sheriff both saw her, acknowledged her, but is she still visible? She saw herself in the mirror, too. That could mean nothing, but she can’t take that chance.

Does she hide? Confront whoever it is?

The door knob to her bedroom twists, and she makes a snap decision.

She hides in the closet.

It feels a little ridiculous. She’s an undead _something_ that apparently feeds on the fear and pain of the living, and she’s hiding in her own closet like a goddamn teenager.

But that’s forgotten as soon as she sees the intruder through the wooden slats of her closet door.

“Allison?” he says. His voice is hesitant, but his body language is anything but. Gun held high and strong, steps slow and sure, his head barely moves as his eyes flick around to take in all corners of the room. He’s the epitome of strong and professional.

Dad.

What’s he doing? Who walks into their dead daughter’s room for the first time in who knows how long, carrying a gun and calling out her name?

“Allison? Are you here? Are you….” He trails off, and Allison can see him staring at the pile of debris on her bed. “Allison?” he asks again, this time sharper. His eyes continue to rove the room, no doubt looking for her shape.

He was expecting her? How is that possible?

Allison scowls. Stiles and the Sheriff. They no doubt called Scott, who called Deaton, who probably figured it out in about ten seconds because he’s not a real person, he’s some kind of weird druid who knows everything. And Deaton would have called her dad.

Dammit.

“Allison, if you’re here….we want to help you.”

 _Yeah,_ Allison thinks, scowling. _That’s why you’re carrying a gun._

“We figured out what happened. Someone did this to you, honey, but we can fix it. You just need to let us help you. We’ll fix this.”

Fix this? He’s talking about getting rid of her. _Killing_ her. Again.

Does the idea even bother him? He buried her a few weeks ago, and he’s disturbingly eager to do it all over again. It feels like an ultimate betrayal. Friends and lovers are one thing. But her own father? The remaining person on this planet with a genetic predisposition to love her?

Her fingers twitch. She’s itching to burst out of this closet and attach herself to her father’s flesh, leeching his life from him until he knows exactly what he’s trying to put her through. She broke her tether to Kira to form a new one with Stiles, so it shouldn’t be hard to do the same here.

Before she has a chance to try, that already-familiar feeling of barbed wire in her gut starts to tug her in the other direction. She stumbles back against the closet wall, biting back a breathless curse.

Whatever strength it was that allowed her to leave Stiles’ side, it’s fading. If she doesn’t get back to him soon, this pain will get unbearable. She knows that much.

She spares one last glance at her father through the closet door, watching as he bends down to the carpet by her vanity. Her nostrils flare, and she clenches her jaw. _Another time, Dad._

Her eyes close. Not entirely sure what she’s doing but trusting her instincts, she concentrates as hard as she can on the image of Stiles. His pale skin, dark hair, the shadows under his eyes and the fear on his face. All of it.

When she opens her eyes, she’s no longer in her closet.

She’s back in the cemetery.

“—suspected something when some items were stolen from my supplies,” Deaton is saying. He’s standing in front of her tombstone, craning his head to look up at that damn angel. He’s not the only one, either. Scott and Stiles stand next to him, dimly lit by the rising sun. Their backs are to her, which is the only reason she hasn’t been spotted. Hurriedly, she ducks behind a large tombstone about twelve feet from her own. It hurts, stretching out her tether to Stiles to its max, but she ignores it.

“Why?” Scott asks, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

“The items stolen, when put together, create a very complicated spell,” Deaton says cryptically. “Not unlike the kinds that Jennifer used, although even dark druids don’t usually attempt this level of dark magic. Then you brought Kira in, and the animals went crazy, and now Stiles….the pieces all slid into place.”

“Is she….alive?” Stiles asks, rubbing his bare arms as if to warm them up. He wobbles a little where he stands, and Scott holds out a hand to steady him.

“No,” Deaton says. Allison is surprised how much his answer disappoints her. Rationally, she knew she wasn’t actually alive again, but to hear it for certain is disheartening. Even now, she’s really no better off than she was before she crawled out of the ground. She’s still dead.

Deaton continues. “She’s a spirit. More specifically, a vengeance spirit. Brought back specifically to bring pain and suffering to those who she believes has wronged her.”

 _Tell me something I don’t know_.

Scott shucks off his jacket and helps Stiles into it. Then, with both of his hands on his best friend’s shoulders, he leads him over to a low tombstone so that Stiles can rest against it. It moves them closer to Allison, lessening the pull of that black vapor trail.

“So this is happening because she blames us for what happened to her?” Scott asks.

 _Yeah, it is,_ Allison snarls in her head, shifting her hiding spot slightly.

“Not necessarily.” Deaton kneels down at the base of her grave and delicately plucks a wolfsbane flower from the ground. He twirls it around in his fingers. “Whoever cast the spell might have done so with a specific intent in mind. They wanted her to be vengeful, and may have manipulated her spirit to achieve that.”

“Why would they do that?” Scott asks.

Deaton looks at him. His expression is as blank as ever, but he’s using his extra-serious tone, the one that Allison always associated with dramatic pronouncements of danger and death. “She was probably raised less than a week ago, and she’s already attached herself to and drained two separate people. She’ll only get stronger, Scott. Next time, she might not leave them alive.”

“Someone wants us dead,” Stiles surmises. “And they’re using her to do it.”

Allison raises her eyebrow. Good to know killing is within her repertoire, even if someone _is_ pulling the strings.

But that’s the least of her worries right now. She can already feel her power fading. Teleporting, grabbing solid objects, all of it must have drained her pretty fast, like the shortest and worst battery charge in the world. She probably isn’t even visible anymore, either.

Just in case, she keeps herself in a low crouch as she moves closer to Stiles. If she can get a little closer, if she can sap just a little more strength from him….

“And destroying the talisman will….what? Cure her?” Stiles asks.

Deaton shakes his head. “That, I don’t know. It could remove the vengeance aspect of the spell, or it could break the spell entirely.”

“Meaning she’ll—“

“Dissipate entirely, yes.”

Allison pauses. Dissipate? So basically, _die_?

What talisman?

Scott perks his head up, turning to look over Stiles’ shoulder. His eyes pass right over where Allison is crouched, but his expression doesn’t change; he doesn’t see her. She’s definitely invisible again. “Someone’s coming,” he says. “Lydia and Malia, and Kira.”

With the three of them are focused on the girls in the distance, Allison takes the opportunity to slide into place behind Stiles. She doesn’t bother crouching anymore, standing to her full height and sliding one hand around his neck.

She tries to keep it subtle, but she doesn’t quite have a handle on this yet. Stiles, already weak from before, bends over slightly and groans. “No, no, not again,” he whispers.

Allison blinks in surprise when she feels energy filtering through her fingertips. She didn’t even have to create an illusion this time.

“Scott,” Stiles says desperately, trying to stand and failing miserably when Allison tugs him back down. “Scott, I think she’s back. Help, _help_.”

Alarmed, Scott yanks him to his feet. “Here? Now?”

Allison steps over the gravestone to keep her grip on Stiles, adding her other hand to keep it secure. The tremor in Stiles’ voice is telling her all she needs to know; Stiles is so shaken from before, and so afraid of her because of it, that no prelude was needed. He’s already at the exact level of terror she needs.

“Deaton, what do we do?” Scott asks, grabbing Stiles by the upper arm. “How do we fight her?”

 _You don’t_ , Allison says As satisfying as it is to inspire this much fear on her own, she needs this to go faster.

She’s done this a grand total of twice, so she’s not sure what the rules are. Can she make them hallucinate in front of other people?

With Scott standing right in front of them, his expression open with concern, she finds her inspiration. She remembers Scott telling her about the encounter in the animal clinic when Stiles was possessed. Dripping with rain, fresh from a fight with the Oni, a blade sticking out of his gut….

She pictures that as best she can, considering she wasn’t there. Scott, jaw slack with agony and shock, shiny and blood-streaked metal sticking out of his shirt, the horrible noises coming from his gut as his body tries to heal around the blade.

Stiles lights up with renewed fear. “Oh my god, Scott. Scott!”

Stiles’ fingers twisting the handle of the blade, the other hand gripping Scott’s shoulder tight, too tight.

Stiles pushes Scott back with surprising force, nearly falling backwards over the tombstone trying to get away. “Scott, get away from me. I can’t do that, not again, I’m _killing_ you….”

Allison is dimly aware of the three girls skidding to a halt in front of them, making abortive movements to grabs Stiles away from her. She hears Deaton ask them something, _Did you find it_ , but she’s too busy concentrating to focus.

Scott. Bleeding, betrayed, dying.

Stiles is shouting incoherent nonsense, by this point, mostly just a jumble of words mixed with Scott’s name.

“Oh my god,” Lydia whispers. “Allison.”

Glancing over in surprise, Allison sees Lydia staring directly at her, eyes wide in terror.

Visible again. Tangible?

“Get off of him,” Malia snarls, slashing at Allison with one clawed hand, the pain dull and inconsequential. Lydia, on her other side, reaches to pull her away from Stiles.

Lydia. A girl who, a little more than a year ago, wouldn’t be caught dead fighting. Who wouldn’t be caught dead physically exerting herself at all, unless it was the exercise that kept her body in strict, tip-top shape. A girl who was once Allison’s best friend. Not Stiles’ best friend, not Scott’s. Allison’s.

Not anymore, though. Lydia is on everyone else’s side.

This is almost as bad as with her father.

Allison shrieks and shoves Lydia away.

It takes her one long second to realize the sound echoing off the gravestones came from her. She made noise. She _talked_. She’s still not breathing, not exactly, but she can force air through her teeth and push it back out, dried out vocal chords screeching into cold air. It must be the power from Stiles.

She’s not the only one who’s shocked. The hellish noise is enough to give everyone pause, even Malia. Allison backs away from their little group, detaching her nails from the skin of Stiles’ neck. An uneasy silence descends over their little area as she takes another step away. The tether is no longer binding her to Stiles, just like when she ended up in her room.

She doesn’t want to run, though. What good would that do? They already have a plan in motion to stop her, and leaving will only make sure they go through with it unimpeded.

“Allison….” Scott starts, chasing her with steps of his own, his hand held out calmingly. Ever the diplomat, ever the negotiator. Scott McCall, Werewolf Peace Keeper.

“Back off!” Her voice sounds odd. She can’t tell if it’s actually different than her voice when she was alive, or if it’s just the equivalent of talking after gargling sand. Either way, her friends all wince, and Scott halts in his tracks. If she looks anything like she did in the mirror at the penthouse, then she’s probably the picture of grotesque.

“Allison, we can help you,” Lydia chimes in, taking her own step forward. Malia isn’t far behind, clutching Lydia’s wrist protectively. “We can—“

“Just stop.” Allison scowls at all of them, holding up her harpy-like claws to keep them back. “You want to get rid of me. Kill me. _Again_.”

Stiles is the weakest. If she can grab him, isolate him, she can use him to protect herself. Deaton himself said she had the power to kill, once she gets strong enough. Can she convince them that if they destroy the talisman, she’ll shred Stiles into oblivion?

She’s about to make a grab for him when Scott speaks up. “Allison, look at me.” His voice is firm and commanding, and even as an undead spirit, she can’t help but straighten up and pay attention.

He’s different than he was sophomore year, but it doesn’t matter. Those big brown eyes are still the same. “Why are you doing this?” he asks softly.

It’s such a simple question, but it’s also unbearably complicated. Why is she angry? Why is she hurting them? Why is she trying to prolong this entire nightmare by protecting an existence that, in all honesty, is miserable and shitty?

The more important question is: Why should she care?

He doesn’t deserve to have this blow softened. None of them do. “Because you all deserve it.”

Scott looks down, jaw clenching. “What happened to you wasn’t fair, but—“

“No, it wasn’t. I died trying to save this one –“ she jerks her head towards Lydia “—from this one –“ Stiles “—and his army of fucking _demons_ provided by _this_ one’s mother –“ Kira “—and you? You just let it happen. Let me die. You and everyone else.”

Lydia tries to chime in, but Allison is having none of it. “And _then_ , you all have the gall to move on with your lives. I _died for you_ , and I have to watch you all grow up. Do you realize you’ll be older than me soon? Some of you already are!” She can’t tell if her voice is breaking because of disuse, or because she’s breaking a dam and releasing a flood she hadn’t known was there. But there’s no stopping her. “And I _saw_ that damn shrine in my room, like you all think that’s _enough_ to make up for everything. It’s not, though, okay? _It’s not_. All the ticket stubs and cheap pictures in the world can’t change the fact that _I’m dead_.”

This is different than sapping energy from someone. This is explosive, aggressive, and obvious in a way she hadn’t realized she was craving. She’s confronting them, finally. Confronting everything that’s been slugging its way through her skin since she woke up. Her friends don’t know what to do with her torrent of words. They look flattened by them, absolutely destroyed.

“You’re sick, Allison,” Deaton says, and damn, but she almost forgot about him. “This is the spell talking.”

She turns on him, snarling. “What would you know? All the death that goes on in this town under your watch? You’re supposed to be the one with all the answers, but your answers don’t do shit.”

“They do some good occasionally.”

Allison whirls around. Standing some distance behind her, a necklace dangling from his hand, is her father. He carefully sets the necklace on top of a tombstone before pointing his gun at it. In the dim light of the rising sun, she can see just how haggard he looks. He’s let his beard grow out, and underneath it his cheeks look gaunt.

“What’s that?” she asks uncertainly. It’s the necklace that was lying on top of her compound bow, the one from the shrine. The Argent necklace.

“It’s the talisman,” Deaton says, a troubled look flashing across his face before it smoothes out. “That’s the item your spirit was linked to by whoever cast the spell.”

The thing they need to destroy in order to destroy _her_.

Before anyone can react, Allison rushes her father. If she were anyone else, she would have been gunned down within seconds, but she sees the hesitation in Dad’s eyes. Whatever she is, whatever she looks like, he can’t do it. He can’t take the shot that will end her life for the second time.

She should be happy. Relieved. Maybe even grateful.

She just sees it as weakness.

The necklace is heavy in her hand, heavier than it should be. She left this on Kate’s body, she remembers that much. So what is it doing not buried in the ground? Would the police or the funeral home have kept it as evidence? Who would break into a police precinct to retrieve it?

Everyone is staring at her. They’re not sure what she’s going to do next. Frankly, neither is she.

“Allison,” Scott says. He would look regal and stoic, leaderly, if not for the tears leaving tracks down his face. “Allison, please don’t.”

“Why not?” she asks. She’s lost her fire, but it still burns. “I don’t want to die.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she watches all the potential threats. Malia, Kira, Dad, even Deaton. Stiles is still wobbling off to the side, and Lydia—

Lydia is right next to her, hand reaching out to yank the necklace from her grip. Allison’s reaction is delayed, too surprised to see damsel-in-distress Lydia taking the lead.

“You won’t,” Lydia assures her. She’s totally composed, but just like Scott, that composure is betrayed by the wetness of her eyes. “This isn’t death. It’s rest.”

And with strength Allison would never have expected, Lydia clutches the necklace in her fist and smashes it as hard as she can against the nearest tombstone. It takes one, two, three hits, but the necklace eventually crumbles into pieces.

Black vapor drifts from the broken edges of the metal, right as a bomb goes off inside Allison’s decaying body. It feels like the blast is tearing her apart, ripping through her pores until there’s nothing left. She collapses to her knees, leaning one hand on the stone, a scream tearing out of her throat.

Her scream cuts out, and the silence that’s left behind is deafening. With monumental effort, she manages to pick her head up and stare at the person closest to her. And Lydia is staring right back, all her careful composure blown to pieces. Her mouth is agape, her eyes wide, her breath escaping her in surprised little huffs.

“What?” Allison asks, scared. She can barely force the words out through her sudden exhaustion. It’s the kind of exhaustion that feels final, like death, so she holds off as long as she can. “What happened? What did you do?”

Lydia blinks. “Nothing. Nothing is wrong. You’re….you’re _you_.”

Her friend’s face is the last thing she sees before her vision goes black.

\-------

When she wakes up, her first thought is, _I’m dying_.

Then she remembers everything: waking up in the coffin, crawling through the dirt, haunting her friends, causing irrevocable damage in the span of only a few days. All of it.

She corrects herself. _I’m dying again._

She opens her eyes, but has to close them again to block out the glaring sunlight. Raising an arm to shield herself, she turns her head to the side and tries again. All she sees is a hazy cloud of purple that eventually comes into focus as her eyes adjust to the light.

Wolfsbane flowers. She’s lying in a bed of them. When she cranes her neck to look up, still squinting painfully, she can barely make out the outline of her angel tombstone.

She’s lying on top of her own grave.

Sitting up hurts about as much as it should, considering there’s a gaping wound across her torso. Underneath that, though, she can tell something is wrong. She’s weaker than ever, in a way that makes her feel insubstantial. Like she’s fading.

Why would she have survived if she’s only going to die (dissipate?) in the near future? It must be some kind of cosmic joke, and she has to admit that it’s one she deserves.

It turns out Deaton wasn’t wrong. With the talisman destroyed, her bloodlust has disappeared entirely. Her thoughts don’t itch with anger. The sludge that had been oozing through her veins has fallen still. And best of all? She doesn’t have the uncontrollable urge to terrorize her loved ones. It’s amazing. A huge relief. The best news she could have ever hoped for.

She can’t help but think that what’s left in its wake is so much worse.

Guilt. Remorse. Regret. Put simply, she feels _bad_. After all the wrongs she’s done in her life, after Kate and Gerard and everything that came with them, she thought she was done with all that. She dedicated her life to doing the right thing, to fixing her mistakes, to making sure she never strayed from the path of _good_ ever again. She _died_ for that cause. _Nous protégeons ceux qui ne peuvent pas se protéger eux-mêmes._

But here she is, with blood on her hands once again. Even in death she can’t escape her own….tendencies.

Her friends’ faces roll through her head like some kind of sick montage. Their fear, their hurt, their confusion. Kira and Stiles, depleted and weak. God, they must have thought she was a monster. She _was_ a monster. She was just as bad as Peter, as the Kanima, as the goddamn Darach. She was the Big Bad of the week. 

After all of that, she almost welcomes the idea of a second death. There’s nothing for her, now. No reason to keep going.

The angel doesn’t seem as intimidating now. When she climbs to her feet and turns around, its presence isn’t looming or oppressive. The arrow isn’t pointed _at_ her, but above her, behind her, like it’s protecting her from an enemy at her back. Even its stone features seem regal instead of just harsh. The circlet on top of its head is nowhere to be seen.

It’s beautiful.

She looks away, hunching her shoulders slightly. The beautiful tombstone is a reminder of how much her father loves her. The same father she imagined tearing apart not too long ago.

The sound of footsteps on the soft grass gets her attention. Her head snaps around, eyes wide in panic.

It’s Lydia. She’s teetering her way across the grass field, wearing impossibly high heels that miraculously avoid getting stuck in the dirt. Her eyes are trained on the ground, her head bowed, and Allison considers hiding. Is she visible? Have the rules of this weird afterlife changed?

But when Lydia looks up, her eyes pass right over where Allison stands and rise to meet the angel’s, clearly none the wiser. She stands not even a foot away from Allison herself, arms hugging her waist.

“Hey, Al,” she murmurs. Her face is haggard, her eyes and mouth drooping in grief and exhaustion. Allison winces.

Lydia takes a deep breath before continuing. “Look, I don’t know what happened. I don’t know who cast that spell. I don’t know how they got the Argent necklace. I don’t know if breaking it sent you back to wherever you came from, or if it destroyed you entirely, or if you’re still here somewhere and just can’t tell us—“ She cuts herself off, grimacing at her feet for a moment before looking back up. The pain in her eyes is unmistakable. “I don’t even know why I’m here, to be honest. I just….I miss you. The _real_ you, not….whatever the hell that spell turned you into. So if you’re still here, and no longer out for blood, then….is there any way you can give us a sign? Something?”

Allison wants to. She wants to reach out and tug her best friend into a hug, reassure her that she’s back to normal (kind of) and that she’s so, so, _so_ unbelievably sorry. But when she tries, her fingers bounce back at her.

No voice. No touch. No control. Even standing mere inches away from the closest friend she ever had, she’s unbearably isolated. _I’m so sorry, Lydia._

Lydia sighs. “I don’t know what I was expecting.” Shaking her head, she turns around to walk back the way she came.

Was Allison brought back from the brink just so she could see for herself what damage she caused? No. There has to be a way to fix this.

Allison follows her. She half-expects to be pulled her back to the grave like before, but nothing happens.

She lucks out at the car, too. The windows are all rolled down to let in the unseasonably warm breeze, so all she has to do is slip into the passenger seat through the window. If she wasn’t incapable of touching things, she definitely would have banged her head. It’s almost comically awkward.

She doesn’t laugh.

A black, viscous substance has started leaking from the tips of her fingers like blood. Allison should be surprised, shocked, maybe even a little scared, but none of that comes to mind. She’s too busy gaping at the thick, round drop of it that has fallen onto the leather seat of Lydia’s passenger seat. Maybe it’s a sign of her fraying nerves, but this bothers her more than anything else. Instead of worrying about where it’s all coming from, she focuses on not staining Lydia’s upholstery, tucking her fingers into the folds of her ruined sweater and shifting them whenever the fabric gets too soaked.

This distracts her so thoroughly that she misses all the familiar road signs, the routine twists and turns, even that faulty streetlight that always made her late for school. She doesn’t even notice the car has stopped until Lydia is getting out, heels crunching against the pavement.

They’re at the apartment building. The penthouse.

She scrambles out of the car window and scurries after Lydia. Watches her get buzzed in. Slips in right behind her, the door catching her heel and repelling her forwards.

Allison has no idea why Lydia would be here, why _anyone_ would be here, but the banshee gives no indication as to what she’s doing. The elevator ride is silent, right up until the doors open with a soft ding.

She doesn’t know what she expected, but it certainly isn’t what she finds. This apartment is entire _galaxies_ away from the cold, dark shell she visited earlier. The sun shines brightly through the open curtains, and all the light fixtures are blazing a warm, yellow light. There’s still dust everywhere, but most of it has been disturbed by recent activity, thousands of tiny particles dancing lazily in the air. There are even shoes piled in the front hallway, three pairs of sneakers and a pair of boots. And there’s _noise_. Instead of a thick, oppressive silence, there are the muffled sounds of speech, the soft scuffling of feet on the floor, the squeak of bodies on furniture.

And it’s all coming from her bedroom. Allison follows Lydia towards the open door, twisting her black-tipped fingers nervously.

Her friends are all piled on her bed. Scott and Kira are leaning up against the headboard, legs pressed together, hands clasped on Kira’s lap. Stiles and Malia are less conservative, lying sideways along the foot of the bed with Malia on top, chests plastered together. It’s all very….sweet. Domestic, almost.

Not that anyone looks especially happy. Stiles still seems tired, even if the color is back in his cheeks. Scott’s expression is distant and far-away, like he can hide his feelings if he just avoids eye contact. Kira’s brow is furrowed, her mouth turned down in a frown, and Malia just looks solemn, a bystander to a tragedy that has nothing to do with her past and everything to do with her present.

Lydia sits on the corner of the bedspread, feet curled underneath her. “What happened to the stuff we left on her bed?” she asks. Her gaze is trained on the cardboard box in the corner, which is full of scraps of paper and the remnants of Allison’s compound bow. It speaks for itself, so no one bothers answering Lydia’s question.

The silence stretches on for endless minutes. The apartment is lighter, brighter, and more open than when Allison ghosted here by herself, but the mood sure isn’t. She’s about to leave, if only to get away from the misery infecting the air, when Scott finally pipes up.

“Deaton said that her….anger at us was all part of the spell. That whoever cast the spell made her that way.” It’s an opening. A lead-in that lends itself to optimism and hope.

It doesn’t seem to take. Stiles sighs, a bone-rattling gust of air that shakes his entire body. “But it all had to start somewhere, right? Can’t light a fire without a spark.”

“There’s a huge difference between being kind of mad and being bloodthirsty mad,” Malia says, propping her chin on Stiles’ clavicle and staring up at him. “You guys shouldn’t feel bad. From what you’ve told me, Allison made her own choices. Any grief she felt over own death was overshadowed by the need to protect her pack.”

“She’d still have good reason to be mad at us,” Kira murmurs. “Whether or not she chose to be.”

“Mostly because we all moved on. We’re all _still_ moving on.” Lydia’s voice is shattering glass, loud and harsh and sharp. The others wince. “Look at us. She could still be around. She could be in pain. We have no idea what’s happened to her, and we’re all sitting here worrying about our own feelings. What kind of friends does that make us? What kind of people?”

There are tears in Lydia’s eyes. She takes a deep breath and clears them away, her voice coming out much calmer when she continues. “We still don’t know who brought her back in the first place. How did they get that necklace? How’d they know what to do? That’s not something we can just ignore. We have to figure it out and make sure they never do it again. For her.”

Allison wants to hug her. Hug all of them. _Lydia, don’t do that. Don’t worry about me. I don’t deserve it._

And she doesn’t, not really. She said awful things to them. Horrible, awful things that never should have seen the light of day. It was a nuclear blast, and now she’s being forced to watch the fallout, see the radiation sickness show through in their frown lines and the bags under their eyes.

Something wet and gritty fills her eye, blocking her vision. Blinking rapidly, Allison brings up a hand and wipes at it. The side of her hand comes away black, streaks of it filling the creases in her skin.

Sweat dots her temple, but that turns out to be black goo as well. She can feel it in her pores, in her fingernails, leaking from her nose and crusting the corners of her mouth, trailing from her eyes like tears. She can feel it in all her crevices, humid and sticky.

She’s falling apart.

For the first time since she woke up again, she starts panicking. She wants to help them find whoever did this to her, but at this rate she won’t last the night.

She still has to fix things as much as she can. That’s why she followed Lydia in the first place. But how? And how soon? How long does she have before she completely dissolves?

Another drop falls from the tip of her finger, splattering onto the carpet. She blinks down at it, an idea forming in her head. _Maybe this is it._ Casting one last look at her friends, she back out into the hallway and slinks through a different door.

Her father’s study is just as she remembers it. The same giant desk with the same giant window behind it, a plush leather chair sitting between them. The same gun cabinet, even if it’s now empty. And more importantly, the same giant mirror hanging on the far wall. It’s even got that skull hanging on the wall above it, a weird-looking thing whose long fangs and gaping eye holes have always given Allison the creeps. It’s all there for decoration, not for any practical purpose, and despite the shivers it sends down her limbs, Allison has always liked it. The mirror makes the room seem bigger and somehow homier than it would have been otherwise.

But now it makes her uncomfortable. It’s a reminder of who and what she’s become. She can’t see herself in the mirror, and she’ll probably never see herself in a mirror again. And why would she want to? She’s leaking black goo. She’s hideous, disgusting, a weird gothic caricature of who she used to be. Who wants to see that?

Holding her hands upside down, she uses one to scrape as much of the dark substance as possible onto the tips of her fingers before raising them up to the smooth glass. Her skin is repelled like it normally is, but it allows her close enough to leave a smear of goo behind in a single line. Success.

It’s a painstaking process, but she powers through. Line after line forms before her eyes, spelling out letters and then words, and the finally an entire sentence. She’s writing, she’s _communicating_ , and for the first time in what feels like forever, she feels hope. Maybe this will fix things.

Once it’s done, she steps back to observe her handiwork.

_Not your fault –a_

That’s what it comes down to, right? She wants to fix the damage she wrought. She wants to take away the blame she laid on her friends’ shoulders. If she can do that, if she can convince them not to wreck themselves over the wreckage of her life, like some twisted and sick form of sympathy, then maybe she can die (again) feeling like she did the right thing.

And that next death is coming soon. She can feel it in her dusty bones, in the emptiness of her veins that are now clear of infection. She can feel it in the way her body has stopped leaking, leaving behind nothing but the liquid on her hands and the lightest of stains on her skin and her sweater. Whether or not she liked it, that sludge was her lifeblood. Now that it’s gone, she’s just a dry husk waiting to be blown away by the wind.

It happens quicker than she thought it would. All at once, as if called to the surface by her train of thought, the trickling flow of exhaustion quickly becomes a wave, pushing her against the wall. She catches herself with one wet hand, smearing her blood against the mirror and leaving behind a stark handprint with its thumb and fingers splayed wide. With the last of her strength, she lowers herself into a seated position, slumped against the wall with her legs spread out in front of her. Her vision is starting to swim, her muscles starting to shake with each straining movement. Everything feels fuzzy and muffled, the spinning in her head making it difficult to corral her thoughts into any semblance of order. It feels kind of like passing out, which is weirdly distressing; she had hoped it would be more like falling asleep.

She doesn’t know why her friends come in when they do. She doesn’t know if it’s because she made noise somehow, despite everything pointing to that being an impossibility. She doesn’t know if it’s random chance, or one last bit of luck, or the intervention of a fate she’s never believed in. All she knows is that for a few precious seconds, color and light filter back into her world, forming vague shapes that turn into shifting walls of fabric and skin.

It’s her friends, all of them with wide eyes and slack jaws as they stare up at the mirror. They don’t see her, that much is clear, but she sees them. She sees their bodies relaxing, their taut edges softening into something like cautious relief.  She sees tears glinting in their eyes, hands clasping together, mouths twitching like they can’t decide if they’re going to smile or not. She hopes they do.  

Color starts to fade from the world like paint under sunlight. She feels like she has cotton balls stuffed in her ears, filtering out noise until the world is muted and quiet. She’s collapsing in on herself, imploding like a dying star. No more bursts of energy, no more false alarms. She knows this is it.

The last thing Allison hears is Lydia, voice choked up with tears. “Not your fault, either, Al.”

And so she smiles.

And fades.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I know I left it unexplained, but I have in my head a storyline and culprit behind who brought Allison back in the first place. I just didn't think it fit in with the story (nor did I have time to MAKE it fit in with the story) to have Allison figure it out. I'm thinking about writing a sequel from the others' POV where they investigate it and figure out what happened, but it's just an idea at this point.
> 
> This is my first Teen Wolf fic, and my first completed fic in a while, so any and all feedback would be appreciated!
> 
> Also, the art included in the story was the second version. The artist generously revised the first version so that it would fit in better with my story. That first version, which was her original submission for the Reverse Bang and which is just as spectacular as the revised one, can be seen [here](http://i.imgur.com/k71vWRg.jpg).


End file.
